“What we’re trying to do at Proste Cancer Canada…is to get people interested in the disease, get men interested in their own health, interested in their own prostate health, at the same time raising funds for research and making it a serious health issue”

On June 21 Father’s Day 2009, Prostate Cancer Canada coordinated walks and runs across the nation in the cities of Halifax, Toronto, Regina, Edmonton, Calgary, Vancouver, Kamloops and Victoria BC and London On

The Safeway Father’s Day Walk/Run for prostate cancer of 2009, sponsored by BOOST, One a day, the running room, and Air Canada, among other admirable companies, was the most successful yet. Over 6500 walks and runners – including many prostate cancer survivors and their families and friends – tied em up for men, raising over 1 million dollars in aid in the prevention and cure of prostate cancer.

What an exciting event to be a part of.

We’ve talked quite a bit about men’s health on the Pendulum Effect but we haven’t yet had on a professional representing a major organization dedicated to the advancement of a men’s health issue. So I’m really excited to welcome to the show Greg Sarney, Vice President of Prostate Cancer Canada. the largest foundation in the country dedicated to all aspects of prostate cancer outreach – public education, fundraising and research.

Greg is responsible for engaging Canadians through major giving

program and developing partnerships with philanthropically minded companies. He also leads the development of Prostate Cancer Canada’s annual Movember campaign, where men are encouraged to grow moustaches to raise funds, he manages the foundation’s government relations activities and works with their Scientific & Medical Advisory Committee to guide he growth of research program. A graduate of the University of Toronto, Greg previously worked in public relations for Harlequin Enterprises before moving to the not-for-profit sector as Director of Marketing & Communications for Sunnybrook Foundation. The Pendulum Effect hosted a team at the event in Toronto.

More information – including photos from each city’s walk -can be found at http://www.fathersdayrun.ca/

“It is important to realize that while men have, given their lives in this case, to women’s rights, it would also be nice to see women standing up for men’s rights”

-Michael Payton, Cognitive Science Researcher, York University

The Pendulum Effect is excited to welcome to our team Michael Payton
who will be regularly contributing a special segment on news and
commentary related to current affairs touching on men’s issues.

A recent university graduate, Michael is engaged in fascinating
research on ethical behaviour and moral intuitions at York University
in Toronto. He’s also worked as a research intern at Harvard and MIT.
In 2008 he was ranked in the top ten debaters in Canada and the top
30 in North America. Michael is also an active public spokesperson –
having appeared on numerous TV and radio stations like CBC Radio, the
John Moore Show and CTS Television for various political organizations
such as the Canadian Secular Alliance.

Today’s show will strictly feature our first news segment from Michael Payton.

Look for a combination of news and interviews starting with our next
episode, which will include an interview with the Vice President of
Development of the newly branded and much expanded Prostate Cancer
Canada, Canada’s single largest organization dedicated to public
education, research and fundraising into the greatest male cancer
killer.

“there are a lot of things that just weren’t addressed. For instance rates of suicide of people 20-24… men have a 7 times higher rate of suicide, and that’s something that not only most people wouldn’t know it, it’s not addressed”
– Steve Saltarelli, leader of Men in Power, University of Chicago

With unemployment hitting men significantly worse than women in this economic time, and with the gender gap for bachelor and master degrees strongly skewed now in favour of women, not to mention all the other topics we explore on this show, many are starting to ask whether it isn’t time for some male empowerment on campus. and student leaders are beginning to respond. On a future episode we’ll interview a leader from the new Men’s collective at Brandon College in Manitoba, Canada which formed earlier in 2009.

Today I’m really excited to have on the show Steve Saltarelli. Steve is a third year University of Chicago student who recently launched a group that is claiming increasing attention called provocatively Men in Power. Stating at the outset that those seeking a group to advance men at the expense of women are in the wrong place, Men in Power’s mission includes:

– Addressing and raising awareness of the issues and challenges that contemporary men face in society today
– Assisting young men in the community confronting the challenges in their lives and instilling in them a positive view of the role of the male sex
– Reducing if not eliminating the existing antagonism of the two sexes through civil discourse

Is this terribly exist stuff? You can learn more about them at www.meninpower.com or find them on facebook by searching under Men in Power. You might also find them covered in the following press over the last couple of months:

The chicago maroon
The chicago tribune
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Fox news
National public radio
Good morning america

If you can show with objective data that your assumptions and perceptions about men vis a vis women is incorrect the average person goes into a trance, into autopilot, they just dismiss it

Matt Campbell is the Editor of the Men’s Activist News Network (MANN), an ongoing publicly accessible database of news and commentary on men’s issues. He has been involved in men’s rights activism since 2001, working with several organizations in efforts to raise awareness.

Matt also worked with True Equality in organizing their 2007 conference in Washington DC on Boys and the Boys Crisis. The conference featured discussions covering topics like education, fatherhood, circumcision and media bias. In attendance were such keynote speakers as Christina Hoff Sommers on the discrimination of boys in school, radio personality Glenn Sacks addressing the topic “Can Boys and Girls be Raised Without Men: the Drive to Diminish the Importance of Fathers”, and Paul Nathanson and Katherine Young speaking on the topic “Coming of Age as a Villain: What Young Men Need to Know in a Misandric World.” It was a real landmark event in terms of bringing some very rarely heard issues into the spotlight. You can learn more and get DVDs of the presentations at TrueEquality.com.

it’s a grim sort of democratizing because it means that anybody could be killed…there’s an equality of death

women were the audience for male valour and helped to authenticate it

On today’s show I interview Professor Leo Braudy on his book From Chivalry to Terrorism: Men and the Changing Nature of Masculinity.

Leo Braudy is among America’s leading cultural historians and film critics. Currently University Professor and Leo S. Bing Chair in English and American Literature at the University of Southern California, he teaches Restoration literature and history, American culture after World War Two, popular culture and critical theory, including the histories of visual style and film genres. His work appears in journals such as American Film, Film Quarterly, Genre, Novel, Partisan Review, and Prose Studies—to name a few.

Leo Braudy has previously taught at Yale, Columbia, and Johns Hopkins. He has received a Guggenheim Fellowship as well as a senior Scholar Fellowship from teh National Endowment for the Humanities. He has been a fellow at the Rockefeller Foundation at the Villa Serbelloni in Bellagio, Italy, as well as a writer in residence at the American Academy in Rome. His book Jean Renoir: The World of His Films was a finalist for the National Book Award. Another of his books, The Frenzy of Renown: Fame and Its History, was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award. He has written for the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Harper’s.